


Variegation

by dancingontheedge



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, American Civil War, F/M, Self-Esteem Issues, conceivably within canon parameters until 2.04, season 2 timeline shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:19:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9486938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingontheedge/pseuds/dancingontheedge
Summary: Everyone is born seeing the world in black and white.  Every time they love someone new, another color appears.  Meeting a soulmate will fill in the rest of their colors.  Halfway through 1862, Emma and Henry begin to see the world in color.





	1. Emma

It was said that those you loved brought color to your life, and it was undoubtedly true.  For every person you gave your heart to, you got a color.  A color was no guarantee of happiness or reciprocity.  It was a marvel, to talk to the elderly about the way colors filled in slowly throughout their youth and adulthood.  And some of those elders would sometimes speak of the rarest of events—getting all of the colors, all at once.  Not just loves, but soul mates.

Belinda had told her of such a man, in South Carolina where Emma’s mother had lived out her youth.  He had been a slave, with eight colors by the time he was ten years old.  He had been middle aged, when Belinda knew him as a girl, and she described for Emma the way his heart was broken.  When he had been 23, he had fallen in love with the overseer’s daughter, who was on her way to ardent abolitionism.  The white overseer’s daughter.  The moment his heart acknowledged it, the rest of his colors flooded in.  He spent about half a day in the ecstatic haze of new colors and newly acknowledged love before he realized—his feelings didn’t matter, and his heart promptly shattered.

Emma understood the point of the story, shared with a young girl on the cusp of womanhood.  It was a warning: not all love stories end well.  Not even true love stories.  It did not stop her from dreaming of finding her colors, but it did make her wary.  And it made her glad that her father’s factory was worked primarily by freed men.

* * *

At the start of the war, Emma had ten colors, most of which she could not recall getting.  Her earliest memory was looking at Alice for the first time and getting the sunny yellow of her baby blanket.  Her best friend Sally had given her teal, and Frank gave her red.  She had no way of knowing which of her family gave her the rest of her colors, though she was convinced that Jimmy was the grating orange and Belinda the warmth and comfort of deep brown.

When Mary Phinney swept her into the small parlor for a cup of tea with real honey after Tom died, she got another color.  Lavender for the Baroness, the flowers on the teacup saturated in almost the same manner that the red Frank gave her came through the bandages.

Another change happened, with regards to Emma’s colors, the day that Tom was found dead, though she did not notice it at first.  Perhaps if she had been less distracted by her grief—the olive green of Tom’s haversack had appeared the minute he had shown it to her—she would have noticed.  She would have seen, perhaps, the barest hint of blue in the sky, the slightest tinge of true green in the leaves, the light, translucent blush of color added to skin.  But she was distracted.  And she did not notice, used to her colors appearing in the sharp bursts of an arterial bleed, rather than the slow seep of water wicking up skirts only barely touching a puddle.

The change was so gradual, it was weeks before she noticed anything at all.  If she had talked to scientifically minded Mary about it, Mary would have compared it to a chemical titration, where another drop of acid was added every day until she finally noticed a change.  That was what the arrival of Gustav’s blue had been like for Mary—they were in the middle before she realized they had begun.

So it was that one day, a month after Emma had seen Henry lift Tom’s battered body from the mud of the street, she looked around her and realized that the grays of her world were looking a little more colorful.  She looked around in wonder and no little confusion, convinced that something was not right.  The colors were still fading in, barely saturated, and she had never heard of that before.  It did not help that she could not think of a new love—much less so many!  There must be more than a dozen washed out new colors that she could see, just glancing around the ward. She felt a thrill of dread run up her spine and add itself to the tension at the base of her skull.

* * *

 

Naturally, Emma went to Belinda, who was not afraid to discuss colors.  Mary, while dear, was still so new to Emma that she couldn’t talk about it, especially with her mother’s admonitions ringing in her ears— _Colors are not to be discussed in polite society or in mixed company.  Ever._   And the Alice that Emma had gushed to about the vibrancy of Frank’s red waistcoat was still desperately mourning the clear blue of Tom’s eyes.

But it would have been Belinda anyways.  Belinda who knew more of life than any of her sheltered charges.  Belinda who had given Emma the soothing glory of brown.  The brown of good earth, of mahogany wood, of sweet chocolate, of Belinda’s own dear face.

“Belinda?”  Emma began uncertainly, as Belinda brushed her hair.

“Yes child?” she replied.

“Have you—have you ever heard of colors appearing gradually?  It’s just, my grays are looking a little less gray than they used to.”

Belinda paused for a second in her ministrations, meeting Emma’s eyes in the mirror as she responded with a slow nod.

“You know child, love don’t always come up on a person all sudden.  Sometimes a color will fade in like a quiet dawn.  Does make things more difficult though, if you’re not sure who you were thinkin’ on when it started.”

Emma shifted her eyes down in acknowledgement, careful to not move her head too much for Belinda’s sake.

“What color’s comin’ in child?” Belinda asked.  A safe question, Emma knew, for everyone loved speaking of grays no longer gray.  Or it would have been safe, if Emma’s answer had been different to what it was.

“All of them,”  Emma whispered, “It’s all of them.”

Belinda’s hands stilled.  She heard the fear in Emma’s voice, had heard it since the elder Green girl had broached the topic.  A soul mate, with colors fading in, in the middle of a war?  Worse yet, with every new man in the girl’s life in a hospital bed or a uniform?  The little miss was in for a rough time of it, Belinda knew.  But there was nothing she could do to help.  Not with Emma having so clearly figured the odds on this ending in grief.  So Belinda resumed brushing and allowed a heavy silence to fall.

* * *

 

It was another two weeks before Emma told someone else, and it happened almost by accident.  Doctor Foster, ever observant, noticed something.  Little miss hoopskirt—coming along so well in her nursing—was using an unusual amount of color in her descriptions.  He would have scarce noticed it, except he had an entire spectrum now too, and the variety of her colors was just a little too broad for a twenty year old sheltered miss with a small family.  And so, after she finished assisting him with a surgery one hot and stuffy Wednesday afternoon, he opened the subject.  He was cleaning his kit and she was packing the bandages when he said, “How long?” all of a sudden.  Emma was both startled and confused.

“How long what?”

His query had come out of the blue—she had no way of knowing how true love had been on his mind since Mary had saved him from his own self destruction and filled in his spectrum.

“How long have you had the colors?  Is it your sweetheart, gone for soldier?”  His voice was smug, pleased to have deduced something.

Emma was taken aback—never had she discussed such things with a man, not even Frank.  Her demeanor chilled, but she knew he would never let it rest.  He was not a cruel man, wouldn’t be obvious about it, but she didn’t need subtle needling.  He did, after all, still call her hoopskirt.

“I don’t know how long.  I noticed them fading in a couple weeks ago.  And I do not know who they are for, either, but I know it is not my beau, who gave me red when I was just sixteen.”  Her voice was perfectly composed, cold even, and he nodded once.

“Mine have come in too.”

Emma cut him an alarmed look, and he realized how that may have sounded.

“Not for you,” he said hastily, feeling almost insulted by the look of abject relief on her face as he said it.

“But not for my wife, either.”  Emma winced, and knew exactly who Jedidiah Foster’s soulmate was.  She put her hand gently on his shirtsleeve, “Then we shall suffer in silence together.  Me not knowing and you unable to act.”

Jed was undeniably comforted, and understood why he had really confronted her about this.  It was because she was not giddy with it as most would be, as he could not be.

“Let’s never speak of this again,” he said, and Emma was more than happy to oblige, nodding seriously and retracting her hand from his bicep.

* * *

 

Just two days after her awkward conversation with Dr. Foster, Henry Hopkins ran his thumb along her cheek oh-so-gently, holding her eyes with his for just a moment too long.  He was called away then, oblivious to the pounding of Emma’s heart and the fact that she could still feel the imprint of his fingers.  He was too focused on keeping his own breathing steady and berating himself for allowing his control to slip—allowing himself to touch her, the beautiful angel who had set him reeling.

Emma pressed her hands into her hips—a habit she had picked up to remind herself that she wasn’t wearing hoops, that she was a practical, useful, woman—and took a deep breath.  She walked into a linen closet, braced her hands on a shelf, and promptly fell apart.  The emotions rocketing through her were many, and intense enough to be almost unidentifiable.  Fear and hope and joy and relief and loss and rage and the smallest prickle of lust spreading from where she could still feel his fingers on her.  And guilt.  So much guilt.  For what she had thought was growing friendship was actually growing love, and she could already hear the disgust from everyone she knew before the hospital.

“A Yankee?!” they would cry, incredulous and betrayed.

“But what about Frank?” Alice would ask, alarmed that Emma would flirt with the enemy without a purpose for the cause.

She could picture Frank’s jaw tightening and his eyes going black with rage.

“Are you falling for him?” he had asked after Tom’s funeral, and the expression on his face had scared her, even as she reassured him.  That was before all this started, before she had noticed the colors and feeling the associated panic.  She had forgotten Frank’s question until just now—he was horribly jealous, it had been expected and discarded from memory as quickly as her answer had come.  She had lied to him.  She hadn’t known it, had not even suspected, but she _had_ been falling for Henry Hopkins.

Her corset felt too tight as she tried to breathe, to get her emotions under control.  She took her hands off the shelf.  They started to hake as she wiped the tears from her cheeks.  _I am **done** with crying_ she thought to herself, pressing her hands into her hips hard.  She continued to breathe, long and as deep as she could.

So Henry Hopkins, Union Chaplain, was her soulmate.  So her life was not going as planned.  So he was probably the best man she had ever known.  So he might not survive.  Hell, she was an Army nurse in an Army town riddled with disease; a known Confederate who consorted with spies— **she** might not survive. 

So these feelings did not make what she felt for Frank disappear.  So her emotional turmoil was unimportant in the face of her wounded boys.

She firmed her jaw, wiped her eyes a final time, grabbed some clean linens, and returned to the ward.

* * *

 

Mere days later, she prioritized her father over meeting with Frank, following Henry’s advice that she appeal directly to Mr. Lincoln.  Then he left, and a new kind of chaos gripped Mansion House as the steward was found nearly stabbed to death.

Emma helped Frank, of course she did.  She still loved him, had an understanding with him, was engaged to him.  How could she not?  And she did something stupid in an attempt to force her life back onto the planned track, despite knowing that there was no going back.  Because maybe, if she ignored it hard enough, it wouldn’t be true.

If she ignored it, her darling, daring, passionate beau wouldn’t be a manipulative liar. If she ignored it, her family wasn’t fracturing at the seams.  Jimmy wasn’t petulant.  Alice wasn’t bitter at just seventeen.  Mary’s rumblings about abolition didn’t resonate with her own thoughts—on Belinda, on father’s factory, on the philosophy she’d borrowed from her father’s library, of her father’s own disdain for fugitive slave laws.  If she ignored it, she still hated the Union boys at the hospital.  She still hated the hospital itself, and all it stood for.  She still believed Mr. Lincoln had no compassion.  If she ignored it, she didn’t love Henry Hopkins, and even if she did her family wouldn’t hate her for it. 

After all, ignorance is bliss.

But Frank had tried to blow up the hospital.  She knew it in her soul, knew Henry had no way of knowing what his status update had meant to her.  And ignorance was **not** bliss and it was all true.  She didn’t hate the Union anymore, didn’t hate the Union boys, didn’t hate the hospital.  And ignoring the truth did nothing so much as make her feel naïve when confronted with it.  Frank’s failed bomb had nearly ripped apart all she loved, and she could no longer support him.  He had betrayed her, and she could not ignore it.

Frank’s red was a red of passion, yes.  It was also a red of rage and the blood of innocents on his hands.  Hands she no longer wanted anywhere near her.

She applied to Miss Dix for a position. 


	2. Henry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special shout out to templelibrarian, my bestest friend, for writing the first draft of Rebecca's letter even though she's never seen Mercy Street. I just couldn't get it onto the page.

When Henry was eight years old, his father was laid off by the railroad.  He had been hanging on to his job by his fingernails as the company made cuts, then more, then more again.  After being unemployed for six months, he heard of a job opening farther west.  He packed a carpet bag, kissed Henry’s mother Marta on the cheek, and promised to write.

No letters ever arrived.

Henry has been angry ever since.  It sits at a low simmer, normally, and he tries to keep it from boiling over.  His mother used to touch his head and say _still waters run deep_.  And when he loved, he loved fiercely.

Shortly after he realized he was never going to hear from his father again, Marta found her son in tears.  She knelt in front of him and used her handkerchief to dry his eyes.  He told her he wanted his father’s color to disappear; if papa did not love them enough to stay, he did not want to love papa anymore.

She shook her head and said, “That’s not how the colors work, dearest.  Your papa gave me the sky on a summer’s day, and I would not wish it gone even if I hated him.  They are a reminder of how we love and why we love.  When the world gets dark and hard and grim, they remind us that we can love.  And love brings beauty to the world.”

“But how could he?” begged grief stricken nine-year-old Henry.

“He forgot, dearest.  He forgot that love is beauty and shame does not cancel it out.  You must always remember.  Love is the most valuable thing that we have.”

“Yes mama.  I’ll remember.”

* * *

 

To Henry’s eyes, his older sister Rebecca was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.  She was blonde and cherubic, her smiles slow and easy.  She was not the sort who understood malice, or casual cruelty, and she loved so so easily.  She had more colors than anyone he knew—even Mrs. Olsen who had eleven children and six siblings and watched him while his mother was at work.

When Rebecca was eighteen and Henry was sixteen, she was walking out with Daniel Fremont, who was trying to make friends in town.  Henry was working for the railroad then, and one day he overheard some of the other men from town talking. 

“It’s a great joke,” they said, “Danny, courting the Hopkins girl, you know the one.  A man like him would never marry a girl like her, not with her —oddities.” The last word was spoken with careful disdain.  And Henry felt sick with rage.

When Henry confronted Daniel about it, he just laughed.  Henry snapped.

After Rebecca found out, she never wore the blue-gray color of the cold ocean again.

Two winters later, Daniel Fremont froze to death not fifty feet from his front door.

* * *

 

At twenty-three, Henry added a color to his spectrum.  He hadn’t gotten a new one since he was seventeen and the new preacher came to town.  Pastor Rilke became his mentor and inspired him to enter seminary.  He gave Henry amber, and always encouraged him to follow his dreams, even if they took him from the steady wage of the railroad company.  Henry had no way of knowing it, but Pastor Rilke was pleased that Henry was not taking his dissatisfaction and guilt and running to the gold fields of California, like so many were that year.  Pastor Rilke set Henry on an entirely different path than the one he was on up to that point, and the woman who gave him aquamarine when he was twenty-three greatly appreciated it.

Miss Loretta Wilcox was Henry’s first serious love, and she was a serious woman.  The same age as Henry, she was the teacher for the small town where he had his assistant pastor position.  Before meeting her, Henry had paid little attention to politics—more concerned about the looks his mother Marta got for her accent; that Rebecca got for her slow speech.  But when Loretta was sixteen she had attended the Seneca Falls Convention with her maiden aunt, and she was outspoken on the issue of slavery.  Namely, that it was an abomination unto the Lord.  When he met her, she was waiting for Frederick Douglass’ second autobiography—which she had ordered directly from the publisher—to arrive in the mail.  She also spoke regularly about the Kansas issue, insisting that if she were a man she would join John Brown travelling west.  Henry was attracted to her passion, and read all of the books and pamphlets that she would loan him.  When she began writing letters to the editor, she enlisted him to comb through his well-worn Bible for verses to quote, and he was more than happy to help.

In 1857, after knowing Loretta for two years, Henry received his parsonage two towns over and proposed.  Loretta said no.  She explained that she could do so much more if she were not married, if she did not have the responsibilities and meager means of a pastor’s wife.  She was uninterested in having children of her own.  Given the choice between her causes and Henry, she would choose her causes every time.  He tried to tell her she would not have to choose, naïve even still.  She cried as she broke with him, promising to always wear a bit of sage green in remembrance.

* * *

 

The first time Henry saw Emma Green, she was wearing a pure white day dress which stood out against the grays of her surroundings.  It was a dress designed to catch and hold the eye in a world of drab, and Henry’s eye was caught.

His eyes kept catching on Miss Green well after she had discarded the white clouds of fabric in favor of more everyday grays, and so he saw her compassion grow.  She was solicitous of her friend, always, but she also helped the boys she did not know.  She was fiercely protective of them all, but of Tom especially.  After Henry offered to help Tom and was rebuffed, he understood that he was in grave danger of falling in love with her without her ever noticing, for she was busy and prickly and driven and kind. 

When, a week later, she came to him and quietly, earnestly, reversed her stance and exhorted him to help her friend, he felt his heart lurch in his chest and knew that he could expect a new color within the hour. 

He thought he was prepared.  He was wrong.

Tom had finished half the bottle when Henry noticed his hair, quickly followed by the tan of his freckles, the brown of the table, the maroon of the wallpaper, the red of the chessmen.  He found himself focusing on the amber scotch—a color he already had—to put off the serious thoughts that were coming.  He took a deep breath and hid his unsteady hands under the table.  Tom, drunk, did not notice.  When his hands stopped shaking, Henry poured more scotch for Tom and began to speak.

Henry kept his mouth firmly shut.  Emma had more important things in her life than a man besotted with her.  She had no need of the complication of a Yankee beau.  He would not ask her to choose.  Not between him and her family, not between him and her cause, not between him and her work.  He was quite certain her choice would not be him, but she did not need the guilt of hurting him.  He took to reminding himself that she owed him nothing, that his longing meant nothing, that the important thing was the way she reminded him of the power of love.   The important thing was that he could support her, regardless of how she felt about him.

It would have been more than enough if she had given him only one color; he found himself quite overwhelmed by the wealth of beauty she had brought to his life.  And so he tried to bring joy to hers.  When she needed him, he was there.  When she asked for his ears for her boys, he provided them.  When she asked for his strong shoulders to help move her patients he was there to lift them.   And when she spoke passionately against the war he listened and became so enthralled by her that he did not notice he had wiped a tear from her cheek until he had already done it.  And he did his best to not impose on her.

He did not allow himself to think of the rumors he had heard all his life, rumors of soul mates.  He had always thought them a legend, a fairy story, the sort of thing that you hear third hand about an acquaintance’s second cousin’s friend.  Mrs. Olsen had talked about them the same way she talked about trolls. 

Rebecca had believed.  In the letter he wrote to her after Tom died, he brought it up.

* * *

 

Rebecca’s reply arrived two weeks later, halfway through a hot, sticky, and bloody June.

> _My Darling Brother,_

Rebecca opened the letter with an update on her life: the children, her husband, the farm.  It was not until the end that she turned her attention to his predicament.

> _As I read your letter it brought to mind our mother’s worries-- that I loved too freely and you loved too rarely.  I know that with pa leaving you have never believed love was enough to make someone want to stay with you, and Loretta just reinforced that belief.  But I believe you are wrong, baby brother.  My husband loves me with an all-encompassing warmth and passion.  He would never leave, even if things got hard.  Henry, father left me too, and if you insist on believing that you were not worth him staying, you must also accept that neither was I.  And that I know you could never do.  He chose to leave, and that was his fault, not ours. With this new woman, this soulmate, I worry that you will not try.  I understand that she cannot reject you if she does not know you are hers to reject.  But she also cannot accept you if she does not know you are hers to accept.  And soulmate colors are different from other colors; everything I have ever heard about soulmates says that given enough time, all soulmate loves are reciprocated._  
> 
> _My advice to you, Henry, is to get to know her.  The worst that could happen is exactly what you are setting yourself up for by not trying. The best? The best Henry is that you have found someone to spend the rest of your life with. The perfect woman for you.  But to get her love you have to try.  Just talk to her, Henry, and do not be afraid to pursue if she seems ready.  She is a Lady, she will never make the first move._
> 
> _I have given you my advice baby brother and you will either take it or you won't._
> 
> _Tell me more about her.  You said she works at the hospital?  How did she come to be there?  What made you realize you were in love?_
> 
> _Without my continued faith in love and in those around me, I would not be where I am today.  It would have been so easy to give up when things got hard, to stop trying. If I had been too afraid, I would not have taken a chance on my darling George, would have never believed him when he said he loved me back.  But I was willing to leap, and am the happier for it.  Love is worth it, dear brother._
> 
> _Your aff. sister,_
> 
> _Rebecca_

* * *

 

In light of his sister’s response, Henry kept his eyes open, always looking for signs that Emma was ready.   Three weeks after Lincoln’s visit, he caught a glimpse of her walking down the upstairs hallway with some linens.  Major McBurney grabbed her by the wrist and told her, “Fetch help girl!  Quickly!” and so she came to get him because for Emma, help at Mansion House meant Henry.  After Mary had been safely deposited in her room and shared the good news of Emma’s appointment, he noticed Emma rubbing at her wrist and felt as though his veins had been filled with ice.  He removed himself from the situation quickly, and knew he would not be able to stand in the Major’s presence with ease again.   He retreated to the dead room, that little, hell-drenched place, to give devotions to a man who died on the table, name unknown and unknowable.  There would be no family to claim his bravery, no sweetheart to reassure that he died well.  The unknown soldiers were the most painful.

After a swift round about the wards, Henry returned to Mary’s side.  She was asleep, her face ashen at best—the sort of gray that Henry thought he was done with, a gray that was supposed to be a different color.  He touched her forehead with the backs of his fingers, and was unsurprised to find that she was burning up.  He sat next to her, and began to pray.  He prayed, in a whisper, for her swift recovery.  He prayed that this was only a summer flu and nothing too serious.  He prayed that her grace and wisdom would continue to grace the wards of Mansion House until the end of this war.  While he was at it, he prayed for an end to the war.  And when he was through, he remained at her bedside, just looking at her.  He knew she could not respond, being asleep, but he decided that it was for the best as he began to pour out the troubles he had been keeping bottled up in the same low voice he had prayed in. 

“Emma Green is the most amazing woman I have ever met,” he began.  “Her very presence seems to light up a room, and I can’t help but feel as though I am revolving around her like she’s the sun.   Did you know, I have changed my routine so I am on the same ward as her as often as possible?  She doesn’t nurse just the Rebs anymore, not for weeks.  Not since shortly after Tom died.  This only makes it easier for me to follow her around like a lost puppy, of course.  You’ve probably noticed.  But there’s no way that you know—she gave me the colors.  All of them.  I didn’t think it was possible, thought it was an old wives tale.  But it’s true.  Emma Green is my soulmate, and I can’t bring myself to tell her.  It makes me think that maybe I am what they’ve said.  A coward, for enlisting as a chaplain instead of an infantryman, for being too afraid of the inevitable rejection to risk telling her and losing her forever.  For being too afraid to confide in you, who are like a sister to me, while you are awake and able to berate me for my stupidity as my sister has done.  Every letter since I told her she asks about Emma.  And in every reply, I have to tell her that I am still waiting.  And waiting for what?  Mary, I know if I wanted your wisdom I should have told you when you were awake, but I think I just needed to say it.  Mary—

Henry’s whispers were interrupted then.  Sister Isabella poked her head into Mary’s sickroom and said, “Chaplain, you are needed on Ward 3.”  She glanced at Mary, ashen on the bed.  It was unlikely the nun could tell that Mary was not the color that she was meant to be, but her face softened with concern anyway. 

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” she assured him, and watched as he stood, checked her temperature with the back of his fingers once more, nodded at her, and left.  He did not look back—if he had, he would have seen Mary’s eyes flutter open, pupils blown with fever.  He may have seen her rasp, “Not a coward” at his retreating back as Isabella closed the door.  If he had told her while she was coherent, they could have had a serious discussion about soulmates.  For while Henry struggled with his own perceived inadequacies, Mary struggled under the burden of Jed’s marriage.  And Henry still had no idea that Mary had found her soulmate.

Three days later, Mary was on a barge north and Henry was adding another instance of cowardice to his list.  If he had seen the besotted look on Emma’s face as he berated that horrid man, Reverend Burwell, he would have been confused, for how could she look at him like that when his rage swelled perilously close to the surface?  How could she look at him like that when he failed to confront the Major for Mary, for fear of losing his mind again?  How could she look at him like he was worth her time, like he was anything less than terrifying?  But he did not see, and merely sank deeper into his growing self-loathing without making the stunning realization that in helping Emma so consistently, he had made himself indispensable to her.  Without making the realization that in Emma’s eyes, he was the best man she had ever known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Henry is 30 years old (to my Emma's 20). His father leaves in 1840, three years after the Panic of 1837, when the Railroad he worked for began to experience troubles. Henry attended school until he was 14, common for the time as one room schoolhouses only taught until 8th grade. After that, he went to work for the railroad. He was 17 both when the new minister who inspired him to become a pastor arrived and when the California Gold Rush (1849) happened. That year was one year after the year of the Seneca Falls Convention (1848)-- Henry and Loretta (his first love) are the same age. "Bleeding Kansas" began in 1855, the year Henry and Loretta met, and John Brown traveled there from MA to support the free soil party in a rather violent fashion. Henry proposes to Loretta when they are both 25.
> 
> I'm sorry that this is so much later in coming than I had planned. I really wanted Henry to talk to people the same way that Emma talked to Belinda and Jed. (Specifically, I wanted Henry to talk to Samuel, but I just couldn't force them into the same room. And then, after I gave up on Samuel, he was going to talk to Mary-- but that wasn't working either). Today, it occurred to me that it worked if Henry talked to a "sleeping" Mary.
> 
> I was also planning to use this chapter to take us through the Ayre's Farm in 2.04, but once I started writing it I realized I wanted it to be a lot more fluid in POV than this. So, chapter 3 will be the big get-together (pray for me I've never written resolved romance) and the changes that I'm making at Ayre's Farm. Because Henry's tantrum exasperates me.


End file.
